Faces in the Fire, and Other Fancies

ainly He never did.' Yes, strawberries are delicious; but I am not going to write about strawberries. Cream is also very nice, very nice indeed; but nothing shall induce me to write abou

only this morning, I received an important letter. We shook hands, and were just plunging into the subject-matter of his

ted, pointing 25 to a café near by,

replied, 'I had a

berries and

ernoon was very oppressive; the restaurant looked invitingly cool; a quiet corner among the ferns

of rich and foamy cream. To what different realms they belong! The gardener lives, moves, and has his being in one world; the milkmaid spends her life in quite another. The cream belongs to the animal kingdom; the strawberries to the vegetable kingdom. But here, on these pretty little

gland, frui

r in a show

great subdivisions of the universe greet each other in a plate of strawberries and cream. What ententes, and rapp

t and potatoes, for example. I heard the other day of a little girl who defined salt as 'that which makes potatoes very nasty if you have none of it with them.' It is not a bad definition. But, surely, something is due to the memory of the man who discovered that the insipidity might be removed, and the potato be made a staple article of diet, by the simple addition of a pinch of salt! Then, too, there are the men who found out that horseradish is the thing to eat with roast beef; that apple sauce lends an added charm to a joint of pork; that red currant jelly enhances the flavour of jugged hare; that mint sauce blends beautifully with lamb; that boiled mutton is all the better for caper sauce; and that butter is the natural corollary of bread. 'The man of superior intellect,' says Tennyson, in vindication of his weakness for boiled beef and new potatoes, 'knows what is good to eat.' And George Gissing 28 in a reference to these selfsame new potatoes, adds a corroborative word. 'Our cook,' he says, 'when dressing these new potatoes, puts into the saucepan a sprig of mint. This is genius. Not otherwise could the flavour of the vegetable be so perfectly, yet so delicately, emphasized. The mint is there, and we know it; yet our

an animal; and he proves his superiority by mixing things. His poorer relatives of the brute creation never do it. They eat strawberries, and they are fond of cream; but it would never have occurred to any one of them to mix the strawberries wit

nd characteristic. For we are ourselves such extraordinary medlies. Let any man think his way back across the ages, and mark the ingredients that have woven themselves into his make-up, and

mber, like

Cockney who

ough the forest th

is face and a c

to feather an

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salmon, he hu

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eighbour with a

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Greenwich for

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with men of the great continental forest

Negro and G

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to abstract, to separate mentally the concrete into factors which do not exist separately, we are always disposed to assign causes which are too simple. Nothing in nature is propelled or impeded by one force acting alone. There is no such thing, save in the brain of the mathematician. I see no reason why even motives diametrically opposite should not unite in one resulting deed.' Of course not! It is my duty, that is to say, to take myself to pieces as little as possible. It does not really matter how much of my present temperament I got from the communio

to answer such ridiculous questions when the waitresses at the restaurants begin to ask us whether we will have strawberries or cream! In the beginning, we are told, God created man in His own image, male and female created He them. It is not so much a matter of male and female: it is maleandfemale, just as it is strawberriesandcream. The thing takes other forms. Which do you prefer-summer or winter? As though we should appreciate summer if we never had a winter, or winter if we never had a summer! Is song or speech the most effective evangelistic agency? As though there would be 33 any

ists in taking the whole performance to pieces and allocating the praise. So much for the decorators; so much for the singers; so much for the elocutionists; so much for the speakers; so much for the chairman; so much for the pianist; so much for the secretary; and s

. He has a very pleasing allusion to the facility with which the strawberry mixes with other things. The passage occurs at the beginning of King Henry the Fifth. The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Ely are discussing the new king. They are astonished at the change which has overtaken him since his

sooner left hi

wildness, mor

too. Yea, at th

on like an

e offending Ad

s body as

d contain cel

the Bishop o

grows underne

berries thrive

by fruit of

e. We may find strawberries to-morrow where we can discover nothing but stinging-nettles to-day 'Madcap Harry' was not the only son whose life at first yielded nothing